I still wonder if the night image on faces being a bit soft is related to shutter speed. If the exposure is too long and the subject is moving, you will get a blurred image. Not really sure what the cam does in auto but I would assume it extends the exposure time and adds gain to maintain a video level. The other thing I think is going on is that the majority of the picture (raster) at night is very dark. So the camera is exposing for that level. A face pops into view illuminated by ir and can hit the white clips of the camera and "wash out". Kind of the same as a license plate at night. With lpr it is generally given that the camera used to read plates at night won't be useful for much else due to exposure. But we want it to be exposed for that plate reflecting light so we can read it.
We want to see the poorly illuminated areas and adjust the camera with wdr, shutter, gamma and whatever to see in the shadows but maybe that is hurting the faces at night. So I guess that is what Nayr said about adding a wide angle of light. It would create a more evenly lit scene. Less dynamic range for the auto stuff in the camera to have to respond to. Also the internal ir seems to create a hot spot on a face. Need to play with disabling internal and using wide external ir.
On the shutter thing for example, I have some 2032 Hiks. At night I can make a scene really quiet and bright in the shadows by lowering the shutter speed. I run 10 fps so I can go down to 1/10 in theory. But makes the camera useless for anything moving. And a face is just a blob. That is a great advantage to these starlights. Their low light ability makes moving images much sharper at night.
Might be fun to play with the settings a bit but so far, yup - Auto.
Or am I FOS?
(I jest, I jest...) 
